We don't every really grow up. I have proof.

Once upon a time, when I was a little girl, my mother purchased Tupperware Ice Tup molds. Like these.Except that ours were all white plastic.

My mum made ice pops (popsicle is a trademark of Good Humor, and I am not infringing copyrights, y'see) with Jell-o, Kool-Aide, and I don't know what else, and they were good. Really good.

A news item in last Sunday's paper suggested updating classic cocktails for summer by freezing them in ice-pop molds, and serving them as frozen-on-a-stick rather than blended in the blender with ice to make a slushie.

Excellent idea.

So I asked my mother: did she still have those ice-pop molds? Unfortunately, the answer was no. Bummer. But she did suggest that she had seen the molds at Target et cetera, in the store's patio furniture/summer celebration sections. Sweet, that shouldn't be so hard to track down, then.

I decided that the first experiment should be with my good for you protein smoothie, due entirely to my bad eating habits of late. The smoothie recipe is as follows:

1 c pureed strawberries
1 banana, cut into chunks
1/4 to 1/2 c organic lowfat vanilla yogurt (I am partial to this brand)
2-3 scoops whey protein, based on volume of smoothie; 1 scoop per 8 oz.

Blend all until desired consistency in blender.

I found some molds of my own at a local bargain outlet, intended, I think, as accessories to a smoothie-maker that has been discontinued by the manufacturer. Bonus for me, because I got 2 sets of 4 molds for $0.99. They are conjoined, so to get just one ice-pop out is a pain in the keister, but not an insurmountable problem.

Accordingly, I poured the smoothie recipe into the molds and waited 10+ hours. They're delish as a frozen treat, satisfying the sweet-tooth and making you feel full, thanks to the protein.

Amazon has a bunch of ice-pop molds for sale. IKEA also supposedly has some cool ones, but they're not for sale on-line, and the closest IKEA store to me is going through some huge re-vamp, or something, and they can't tell me for certain if they have any. With gas at $4 a gallon, I do not intend to take a random drive over an hour away just to see if maybe they have some.

But I want these from Amazon, because I think they're way cool.


Not that I need more plastic "stuff" in my life, but I do think that my annual summer party (which is coming soon!) needs the addition of alcoholic ice-pops. C'mon, who ISN'T going to think those are cool?

I am a grown up! I am! ! !

The question remains, can a Mojito Pop be made? Or a Southern Comfort Punch Pop? (I have to make those just because of the name alone, don't I? Say that 5 times fast...) I'd love to locate the recipe my mother used for the cherry pops she made using a powdered drink mix and an instant dessert. Or better yet, perhaps the powdered drink mix I'm currently a fan of, with vanilla vodka....oooooooo.

Sorry to leave you hanging on this one, but for now we'll let the question stand. Possible? Yup, I think so. Can we wait around long enough in this house for the alcohol-pops to freeze? Ummmm.....I'll get back to ya on that one.

Red State

I was chatting online with a few fellow fangirls a few days ago and we were talking about obnoxious t-shirts I bought from Cafe Press, one of which says, "Don't fear feminists. We just want our turn on top." I think that the shirt is hilarious. I needed new t-shirts for the gym, my old ones are too large, so I wear it there. I picked up a few other shirts as well, each of them more obnoxious than that one. I told my friends about all of them.

One of them blatantly declares that I am pro-gay rights, and yes, I *do* wear it to the gym as well. Did I mention that my gym is a YMCA? A Young Men's Christian Association? So I'm waiting for someone to say something to me about the t-shirts, especially the gay rights one. Or waiting for the Y to just toss me, for the shirt alone.

One friend said, "Is Ohio really that red? Or is it just where you live?"

I responded, "Are you KIDDING me? We passed a defense of marriage act. Homophobic misogynistic bullshit."

Another friend chimed in, "Uh-oh. Lucy's getting fired up. Quick, someone change the subject."


They know me too well.


But I do get fired up about gay rights. What makes you so special, Mr. and Mrs. Straight America, that you can deny the rights of someone who isn't straight?

My parents live in a resort-style community. Gated, on a lake, in the summertime it is just about "party central." The 'rents have a fire pit, which becomes a gathering place on fair summer evenings. People from around the development carry their coolers from home and settle around the fire, and talk about everything from politics to how the wake boarding was on the lake that day.

A few nights ago, I listened as a few of my parent's neighbors talked about a man who is looking to buy in the development. (The community is "gossip central" too.) Turns out that the man might be gay and you should have heard the derogatory horrible things several 30-something guys were saying. So terrible that even potty-mouthed me won't relay the conversation to you, I find it that offensive.

I will tell you to your face if you are offending me, no problem. Have done it about a million times before. DH was sitting next to me as this horrible bit of stunning bigotry was taking place, and he put his hand on my shoulder and didn't say a word, but he didn't have to. I knew what he was thinking. "God, don't start!"

So I didn't. I did open my mouth to say a few things, but most of them were under my breath and I know that if they heard me, they weren't paying any heed to me. There was quite a lot of liquor there, so yet again I learned the lesson of In Vino, Veritas.

Going to the chapel

...and we're gonna get married, going to the chapel of love!

A friend got married this weekend. Watching several of my high school friends with their spouses, or significant others, or just standing around the bar talking at the reception made me feel both sad and content. Sad, because we are all getting older. Someone reading this who is in their 50s or so would be annoyed with me, because we're all 30-something these days, and that isn't OLD unless you're a teenager. Content, because it is nice to see folks who I thought would never, ever, ever grow up doing just that. Sort of like, "well, I don't have to worry about *you* anymore, because that's settled."

Weddings usually make me cry. I missed the church ceremony of this weekend's wedding, which I am sorry about, but not too sorry because I don't know if I could have handled it in my current mental state.

I asked so many people so many times, "How ARE you?" wanting, of course, not the social pat answer that we usually give, "I'm fine" but getting not much more than that most of the time. I haven't seen many of these people since the last big wedding, which was I think in 2002. When we, people in general, not just my group of friends, gather at social events like this, so often we strive to be positive and upbeat when talking with old friends about what's going on in our lives, even if things aren't fantastic.

I wrote a post over on MySpace that should have probably been posted here about the walk that we took down memory lane a few days before the wedding, the shared language we have of "do-you-remembers" and the common experiences of our school days. These are old friends, some of them from middle school days, almost all of them from the same high school I attended. Scattered, now, from Arizona to Oh-hia-ia, with jobs diverse as can be imagined. But yet, with the commonality that we have of our youthful days, I honestly don't need to ask how they're doing, I can tell from a look in their eyes, a certain tilt to their smiles, decoding with ease the unspoken message.

I was honest and truthful when people asked how I'm doing; actually, each time someone asked me, "How ARE you?" I responded by saying, "I'm unemployed! *laugh* But all right. How are you?"

We talked about plans and dreams, goals and aspirations, kids, (who has them, who doesn't) cars, mortgages, houses, careers. What astonishes me, over and over again is that we're ADULTS, really, we're the grown-ups. I don't think of myself as an adult. I don't think of most of them as adults either. In my mind's eye, everyone remains perpetually about 17. Seeing them in person, then, is always a shock, because hey! No on really IS 17 anymore. When did that happen? How do the years slip away from us? Why isn't there a "pause" button for life?

I bought a dress to wear just about an hour before I left for the event, a silly set of circumstances that would only happen to me. I didn't need a new dress, but tagged along with a couple of friends just for the heck of it. I tried on sundresses, things that reminded me of 50's style party dresses, (it is true, nothing ever really goes out of style) and things that didn't fit, or fit me badly. Coming out of a dressing room, I saw a stunning light blue gown made of floaty sort of material hanging at a cash register, and I asked the salesgirl if they were holding it for someone. "No," she said, "We were looking for another size at another store." So I picked it up and checked the size, and wonder of wonders, it might fit me. When I tried it on, it was perfect. Everything else I'd tried on had been about $40, but of course this one was over $90. And a color that I have nothing else that will match it, no shoes, no purse, no wrap in case it gets cold.

So I wandered to the shoe department, and found the perfect strappy sandals to go along with it. More than $100 later, I was ready to party! It looked fantastic, though. I'm vastly entertained that the shoes bear the label "Jessica Simpson."

It was a late night, and I've had a slow start to the day. But the house is clean, the sun is shining, and the day calls out to me. Tomorrow is the first official day of my unemployment, and I have it planned so that I'm not sitting at home moping. I'm toying with the idea of going to a spiritual retreat up in New York state for a few days, as I try to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with my life. Seems like a good idea to go and meditate and reflect and plan. For now, however, I'm off to enjoy the sun while it lasts.

Listening to: Mix of Swedish pop including Per Gessel, Lisa Nilsson, Marie Fredrickson.

The Full-Fat Version

My sisters being home means many things, not least of which is the chance for the three of us to catch up and be very silly together. We'll all be at my parent's place, with its lake and pool, plus all the water toys you could ever want. There's enough room for the whole fam there, and we have a great time. But it also means that there's lots and lots of good food around this weekend.

I made chocolate chip cookies on Wednesday night, not the usual hearty cookies that I'll make for DH and I with whole-wheat flour and all kinds of other things tossed in that make them more like trail mix. No, I made the two-sticks-of-butter that go straight to your thighs chocolate chip cookies. Not good for you. I can't resist the dough, but I'm better at resisting the baked cookies. Usually.

I also made lasagna. And when I tell you that I made lasagna, I mean all day in the kitchen and everything from scratch. I learned the recipe from a wise woman in Europe, and it is well worth the effort. Instead of using the ricotta cheese that you usually find in lasagna, this variation, probably northern-Italian influenced, uses a white sauce not unlike an Alfredo sauce for pasta. You can make this white sauce with skim milk and reduced fat cheese and margarine, but since I make it so rarely, why the heck would I do that? No, this was the hefty version.

It starts with a stick of butter, and a half cup of flour. You make a basic blonde roux, and then in a very long process, you add whole milk and cream, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, asiago cheese, Romano cheese, and fresh mozzarella cheese. This takes nearly an hour, and must be stirred constantly. Burn something in the bottom of the pan and you've got to start over, because you'll never get rid of that burnt taste, no matter how much doctoring you attempt. Add the cheese when the sauce is the wrong temperature and you're left with a stringy mess. Been there, done that, more than once.

It is, of course, a labor of love, I pull out the lasagna only for special occasions because of its pain-in-the-ass factor. But I won't eat more than a few bites of it myself, because it is much too high in fat to indulge in more than a wee bit.

Then there's the bratwurst that will be boiled in dark beer with sweet onions and garlic and whole black peppercorns, then tossed on the grill to sizzle. They're eaten with those onions removed from the beer bath and fried in butter. I can't resist one of those, some of the very very little red meat that I will eat.

Not to mention the potato chips that are not in MY house, ever, the scratch-made guacamole for the tortilla chips, the apple wood smoked bacon (um, bliss, I promise) and you've got a recipe for completely destroying the healthy eating that I've been doing for the past six months.

Fortunately, reason prevailed a tiny bit, and there are vegetable and fruit trays, I made my quinoa salad, which is really good for you. I brought boneless skinless chicken breasts to toss on the grill that are already in a tasty but not bad for you marinade, and I insisted on two cases of water to combat the temptation to drink soda and beer.

I don't know anything that will stop me from drinking mojitos, those will be around as well. And sangria. But we do usually wait until at least late afternoon....yeah, nothing I say here is going to help the impression you're getting right now, that we're all full-blown alkies. We're not, I promise.

I can work out at my parent's place, the community where they live has a nice exercise room. I'm not sure I'll take advantage of it, but I'm pretty sure that the potato chips I ate today while listening to babysis tell our dad stories of island life will end up coming back to haunt me unless I get on the elliptical and do my usual routine.

Middlesis gets here on Friday, and it looks like the three of us will have lots of time entirely to ourselves without anyone else around, and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that.

Listening to: Incubus, Light Grenades

So THAT's what summer feels like!

I'd forgotten.

My parents live on one of Oh-hi-ia's many lakes, not THE lake, which in local parlance is Lake Erie, but a lake. A fairly large one. Their condo development also has a pool, so in the summer time, we spend quite a bit of time there.

Late yesterday afternoon, DH woke me from a nap to tell me that he was heading to the 'rents place to help my dad with a few projects around the dock. I blinked up at him, asking, "What time is it? And what's it like outside?"

When he informed me that it was nearly 3 pm and the day had turned out to be a beautiful one after the horrible storms that roared through the area on Friday, I decied that it was, indeed, time to get up and get moving.

Once at the lake, in my bathing suit, I sat poolside, reading, listening to U2 on the iPod, and watching the residents of the development get re-aquainted. In the wintertime, you see nary a soul in my parent's neighborhood. Come summer, they're all at the pool, bs-ing, sharing margaritas, wine, or whatever. It was here that I first had a mojito, which I now consider an essential summer drink. At the end of the post I'll share my recipe for mojitos.

It wasn't hot yesterday, just warm enough, with not a cloud in the sky. Before heading out, I'd slathered a new sunscreen from head to toe. I burn, quickly, in any sunny setting and since mum had skin cancer a few years ago, I'm even more vigilant in its application. OT for just a second, the sunscreen was this stuff, which incidentally I do not recommend. If feels downright icky on the skin.

That feeling of sunscreen on the skin, the shouts of the kids in the pool, the smell of margaritas on the air, the gentle warmth that surrounds you on a nice-but-not-too-hot&humid-day....I'd forgotten how nice it is.

Lucy's Non-Exact Mojito Recipe
makes one 2-quart pitcher

Juice of 3-5 limes, about 1/3 cup, keep the juiced halves of lime rind
Large bunch of mint
1/2 cup sugar
2-litre bottle of clear soda, or even just soda water
Rum, to taste, I usually use about 1/3 to 1/2 of a fifth, always Captain Morgan's
Ice


equipment needed
Mortar and pestle
Large spoon
pitcher, 2 quart or larger. Clear glass is nice, shows off the finished product.
as many glasses as needed to share with everyone

directions
Juice the limes directly into the pitcher. Cut the halves of the lime rinds into quarters or smaller sections to toss in at the end. Add 1/2 of the sugar to the lime juice. Place the other half into the bowl of the mortar and pestle. Using the pestle, bash the mint leaves and sugar together. Reserve a few sprigs to garnish the glasses. No need to make a paste with the mint and sugar, just beat them together enough to break the mint leaves up a bit. Add the rum, and mint/sugar blend to the pitcher, stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Pouring SLOWLY, because sometimes it fizzes over, add the soda. Give it another stir, toss in the lime sections, add a handful or so of ice, and prepare to be wowed at how refreshing this is.

Ow. Or, why I am only a social drinker.

Still in NYC with thesister and having a wonderful time. I just can't hang, and while I'd like to qualify that by saying that I can't hang like I used to, I never could.

We started last night by heading to an Indian food restaurant in Little India, and YIPEE for yummy curries. Thesister and her roomie shared a bottle of wine with dinner, but I stuck to water, knowing it was going to be a long night and not wanting to give in to the embarrassing tendency to just passing out when I've had too much to drink...I will just fall asleep on you.

We left the Indian food place to head to a poetry reading at KGB, which was awesome. The author/poet we went to see has written a book called "The Amputee's Guide to Sex". Awesome, no? It rocked. One rum and coke for Lucy there.

Moving on, we went to another place called Piano or Pianos, I'm not sure which. Another rum & coke there, but that place sucked. Too crowded, too many hipsters. I'm just not that cool, y'all. No place to sit down, but on the upside, I love the fact that you can't smoke ANYWHERE inside in New York. We left when a DJ began setting up his two turntables and microphone right where we were standing and he bitched at the roomie and I to not touch 'his equipment' which made us giggle for about a half hour afterwards.

We went next to a place called Boss Tweed. We were, I think, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I mean, I know we were in Manhattan, but my sense of direction is terrible and I just follow thesiter around when I'm here because she has a fantastic sense of direction. Anyway, Boss Tweed was much calmer, quieter, there was someplace to sit and a back patio that we could sit on, and thesister and the roomie could smoke out there. I had two (at least) drinks there. I'm pretty sure it was only two.

We took a car back over the bridge into Brooklyn, and headed to thesister's local, a place called the Duck. At The Duck, that's where things get much more hazy, confused, and not tipsy, but drunk. I have no idea how many drinks I had at The Duck. Three? Four? So for those keeping track, that would be somewhere between six and eight rum and cokes.

A trick that I learned a long time ago is to have a glass of water after every alcoholic drink, which helps keep you hydrated, and hangovers are partially (IMO) due to dehydration, so since I did that, I am not hungover today, but I am hurtin'. Thesister and I talked after coming home from the bar until almost 4am, and then I was done sleeping at 10.40 this morning. So, yes, OW.


Before all of this insanity last night, yesterday we tramped all over parts of the city, visiting a branch of The Strand, a fantastic bookstore, and a toy/comic book/sci-fi geek store next door, called Forbidden Planet. Thanks to some friends on the fan forums, I had some suggestions for new books to look for, and I picked up a bunch of great new books. Which I now have to cart back to Ohio, silly me. They're heavy. But fantastic, I feel like I'm standing on the threshold of new worlds about to be opened to me when I have new novels to read.